POLARIS Spaceplanes is developing AURORA, a multipurpose spaceplane and hypersonic transport system. Before beginning work directly on AURORA, the company has focused on developing and testing progressively larger demonstrators, the latest being a pair of identical five-metre-long vehicles, MIRA II and MIRA III.

In a 27 February update, POLARIS revealed that it had received a BAAINBw contract to design a fully reusable hypersonic research vehicle. The contract describes the vehicle as a hypersonic testbed and experimental platform for defence-related applications, as well as scientific and institutional research. A secondary role of the vehicle will be to serve as a small satellite launch system when equipped with an expendable upper stage.